We seem destined to relive the 1972 election this year — the election in which the left demonstrated its maniacal hatred of the president and consolidated its hold on the Democratic party. McGovernism became the the prevailing doctrine of the Democratic Party. John Kerry entered the scene as a national figure.
Now Kerry is running a campaign that is pure McGovern. As if to rub our noses in the past repeating itself, Seymour Hersh is back, trying to relive the glory days when he earned his chops on William Calley.
Today’s Boston Globe carries a report that works like the smell of incense to awaken dormant memories: “Records detail FBI tracking vets, Kerry.” The Globe reports:
The FBI released thousands of pages of documents yesterday detailing how the agency monitored the activities of Vietnam Veterans Against the War and occasionally took note of the speeches of one of its leaders, John F. Kerry.
Much of the information in the documents is secondhand hearsay, such as a report on a comment Kerry reportedly made June 14, 1971. The report quotes a source as saying Kerry told an audience at a Philadelphia YMCA that Ho Chi Minh, the North Vietnamese communist leader, was ”the George Washington of Vietnam. Ho studied the United States Constitution and wants to install the same provisions into the Government of Vietnam.”
Kerry spokesman Michael Meehan said last night that Kerry was saying ”the people of Vietnam believe he was their George Washington, John Kerry never believed that.”
Can bell bottoms be far behind?
UPDATE: On a related note, James Lileks observes:
What really bastes my brisket (did I just write that? I need a beer.) is the constant desire to return us to the nadir of the post-war era. They want us to think: quagmire. They want us to think: Nixonian scandal. How inspirational. How Churchillian. I have nothing to offer the American people but blood, sweat and Billy Beer.
Lileks also points us to this post by Meryl Yourish on the murder of the Israeli mom and her four daughters by Paleoswinian savages this past weekend: “Meirav was two.” Meryl also links to this account of the funeral from Ma’ariv: “I’ll never forget you until the day I die.”
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